Poland’s pension online dashboard takes shape

Since Poland’s 2019 auto-enrolment reform, future pensioners can find information about their workplace employee capital plan’s (PPK) assets at a dedicated website (www.mojeppk.pl), managed by PFR Portal PPK, the statutory portal operator and information centre. By cooperating with all 17 institutions managing the savings, it aggregates all PPK information and presents it in the form of a pension dashboard. 

The system is about to receive a big upgrade. Last year, a bill establishing a Central Pension Information Centre (CIE) was passed by the Polish parliament, selecting the institution to develop a dashboard for all three pillars accessed with one click of a button. This is likely to be ready for launch by April 2025 at the earliest.

Bartosz Marczuk, vice-president of PFR (Polish Development Fund, the agency responsible for delivering the system), says that the use of CIE would be voluntary and financial institutions would only be sharing members’ information after receiving their consent.

The system will mimic the functionality of www.mojeppk.pl and add additional functionalities, such as a pension simulation calculator for all pension pillars and access to educational materials. It will also respond to the needs of the local market. Pension fund members will be able to indicate the heirs of all their second and third-pillar funds, without the need to directly contact every single pension provider, a move designed to increase trust and highlight this feature of the pension system. 

From April 2025 at the earliest, assets will also be available on the government website and the mObywatel (mCitizen) mobile app that is used as an eID and public services platform. It has already been downloaded 10m times and has half a million unique daily users.

Increasing pension literacy

Since its launch in 2022, the www.mojeppk.pl dashboard has recorded 500,000 active registrations with 2.2m logins and 16m page views. As Poland’s first-ever pension dashboard is gaining popularity (as is participation in PPK), Robert Zapotoczy, CEO of PFR Portal PPK, believes that the CIE project will be an important step in increasing financial literacy.  

Oskar Sobolewski, pension specialist at the recruitment consultancy HRK and author of an influential Instragram account on pensions, is more restrained in his opinions. He says: “The reception might be neutral, especially considering growing but reserved participation in PPK and very shy numbers for the third-pillar products. If the users enter the one-for-all account and see it empty, they might think that the money was taken by the state again.”

Sobolewski indicates the importance of creating a nationwide educational campaign to promote the platform and equip people with information on what to do if their pension savings are too low. 

The wealth of financial information and access to educational materials should be tailored to different needs, especially as there will be groups that might still struggle to grasp the idea of all three pillars. This could be also supplemented with data on the expected replacement rate, currently estimated at 20-25% for those to retire in 2060. 

Sobolewski also suggests updating the Social Insurance Institution’s electronic services platform (PUE ZUS), which should be an easier and less expensive project. From 2023, every contribution payer is obliged to have a profile there, which applies also to individuals who pay contributions only for themselves or small businesses settling contributions for no more than five people. 

Financing the programme

The cost of CIE is estimated for around €50m in its first 10 years of operation, financed by the Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs and developed in cooperation with over 90 financial institutions and pension products providers. They will also be responsible for providing appropriately formatted data to the system at their own expense, which potentially could translate into an increase in their management fees.

Poland’s Central Bank (NBP) has raised questions about whether the costs are “adequate to the purpose of promoting savings within the third pension pillar”, suggesting a national educational campaign as a better option.

Security of data

To ensure the security of data, CIE will be integrated with the National Electronic Identification Node (Węzeł Krajowy), an online public services gateway. It will serve as an authentication intermediary, also used in other electronic public services, including PUE ZUS or mObywatel (eID).

Zapotoczny says both www.mojeppk.pl and the upcoming CIE are subject to the highest cybersecurity standards, both at the level of system design and data privacy. “Their architecture is based on new-age cloud computing with security guaranteed by advanced encryption and authentication mechanisms and regular security audits.” 

A number of cyberattacks took place last year. These included Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, SYN flooding and various attempts to saturate PFR Group’s application servers. At the time of the attack, the number of connections increased from 60 to 40,000 and the website was not available for an hour. Most importantly, no damage or data leak took place. Recent cyber attacks on Poland’s digital services were linked to activity coming from Russian territory.

The bigger picture

The project matches the wider trend of creating national and European pension information systems and can be compared to similar solutions in Europe, including platforms such as Sweden’s minpension.se or Dutch mijnpensioenoverzicht.nl.

Poland’s new government might reconsider some of CIE’s functionalities. “Although the new tool is already anchored in the law, I wouldn’t be surprised if its purpose is re-evaluated at a later stage,” comments Sobolewski. 

As for the objective of boosting access to personal financial information and widening pension communication, this will also take time.